Feeling Selfish.

When the world is going to hell in a handbasket (does anyone even know what that means?), we all tend to close in ranks a little and watch out for number one. And I find myself doing that more and more these days.

As I mentioned earlier this week, the President today will announce a 50 billion dollar package to assist homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. The recipients will either have the principal on their loans lowered, or have their mortgage rate lowered. All I can think about is - where's MY federal aid??? Looking at this objectively, I guess I should be thankful that I don't need a bailout, but at the same time, my taxes are paying for this at a time when I could use help myself!

Along these same lines, I received an e-mail from a younger radio business colleague the other day who is apparently being laid off. This person had heard that I was getting freelance work at ABC, and wanted to know if I could give him (or her) a contact name so that he (or she) could try and line up some work as well. I wrote back and advised this person that he (or she) was just starting out in life, and that he (or she) should really make a fresh start and find something else to do because radio news is a dead end.

Well, this person didn't take the hint. He (or she) wrote back and said that yeah, eventually, he (or she) would find a new career, but for now he (or she) was just looking for work. He (or she) just wanted a contact. I finally had to be blunt. I wrote this person back and told him (or her) that if there's any extra freelance work to be gotten at ABC, I wanted it... and I sure as heck wasn't going to help him (or her) compete with me for it!

Selfish? Yeah, I guess I was. And a small part of me does feel a little bit bad about it. But a much larger part of me feels angry that someone would put me in the position of being a bad guy.

And finally, here's selfishness on a much sillier, more social level. And yes, it has to do with Facebook. I enjoy Facebook when I can go on there and gleefully carpetbomb the site with sarcastic responses to my friends' status updates, or start singalongs, or write one of those fun random lists. But Facebook goes from party to pain in the ass when I receive friend requests from people I just don't want to be friends with.

This is kind of tricky to write about, because some of these "friends" may end up seeing this. But I am finding it easier to turn down potential Facebook friends rather than to bear the thought of "unfriending" them instead down the road. And it's also a double-edged sword. I have accepted friend requests from people who I never would thought to ask to be my friends online... and they have turned out to be some of my best Facebook buddies.

But still - there are probably 30 people on my Facebook friends list who I have not communicated with since the day I added them... mostly people who are friends of friends, or people who I added because I didn't want to feel the shame of NOT adding them. Sooner or later, they are going to the "unfriend" zone, because frankly, I don't want them to have that much access to my personal life.

Facebook - at least for me - is supposed to be more fun than thoughtful.

Or maybe I'm just being selfish.

Should I Have Intentionally Gone Broke?

I just received the good news! Our application to refinance our home mortgage has been approved, and the closing papers are in the mail! This is happening despite the fact that I am grossly underemployed and loans have been scarce to come by. Robin and I managed to get the loan (30-year conventional, 4.75% plus one point) because we have excellent credit, and because we have a good bit of equity in our home - at least 40 percent of its value.

We have been responsible over the years with our money. We pay our bills on time. We've been careful to pay off our credit card bill every month, and we've never had more than one car loan at any one time. We've taken plenty of expensive vacations, but they've never been paid for by credit card - we've always saved up for them in advance. To put it simply, we haven't spent over our heads, and we've been rewarded by earning the ability to acquire loans at excellent rates. All of which makes me wary of what's going to happen on Wednesday.

That's when President Obama will be announcing his plan to help Americans who are at risk of foreclosure to keep their homes. It's not yet clear exactly what the President will be announcing, but according to the Associated Press, this is how it is expected to go:

A Democratic Senate aide said the plan is likely to include hefty payments designed to encourage the lending industry to lower mortgage rates or reduce the total principal amount owed by borrowers. The idea has become attractive to Obama officials, the aide said Friday, because it is expected to be far less expensive than having the government buy up loans out of mortgage-linked securities.



Howard Glaser, a mortgage industry consultant who served in the Clinton administration, said if 2 million borrowers' payments were lowered by $500 a month, it would cost the government and lenders $6 billion each per year — assuming lenders match half the cost.


Unlike previous loan modification plans, borrowers would not have to be in default to qualify, according to people briefed on the plan.



I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but if this story is correct, it sounds like the government will refinance the homes of people who were at risk of foreclosure, and lower their home payments by hundreds of dollars a month. People who bit off more than they could chew, and purchased homes they could not afford will be getting the same break that I just got - The break that I earned with my good credit and that I paid for with several thousand dollars in closing costs!


I hope the report is wrong and that I am wrong. But if the report is right and so am I, then SOMEONE is going to have to explain to me why I just spent my entire adult life trying to do the right thing with my credit. Is the government going to compensate me, too? I don't want the government's money, but if it IS going to help these at-risk homeowners, then that help needs to come at an equitable price. Any government aid should become an investment in the home. If the home is sold down the road, Uncle Sam should get its piece of the equity back, with interest.



And if the government wants to knock a hundred grand off the cost of my new loan, that would be OK, too! (Not really, but you get my point!)

Reality TV May Suck, But REAL Reality Is Worse!

I have never been shy about admitting to a certain guilty fondness for Reality TV... I enjoy many shows in the genre, including most of the biggies... Survivor, Race, Idol, Dancing, etc. But there is one major reality show that I gave up on long ago - "Extreme Makeover Home Edition".

My biggest issue with the program has always been that the producers build homes for disadvantaged families that are WAY out of character with the neighborhoods that the homes are built in.... You'll see mile after mile of tract homes, followed by a McMansion suddenly squeezed into a corner lot. In addition, the residents of the home are stuck with over-designed rooms that they will never be able to afford the upkeep on, let alone be able to redecorate if and when they choose. Show me an eight year-old boy whose bed is a pirate ship who will still be wanting to sleep with Jack Sparrow when he's 12!

One other issue - the families that receive these homes are usually well-intentioned people who, for one reason or another, are down on their luck. The hidden dirty little secret is that many of these people became downtrodden by their own hands... so it should come as no surprise when they are handed a free house - and still manage to screw things up. That's exactly what happened in Georgia this week...

Read on:

More than 1,800 people showed up to help ABC's "Extreme Makeover" team demolish a family's decrepit home and replace it with a sparkling, four-bedroom mini-mansion in 2005.

Three years later, the reality TV show's most ambitious project at the time has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis.

After the Harper family used the two-story home as collateral for a $450,000 loan, it's set to go to auction on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse Aug. 5. The couple did not return phone calls Monday, but told WSB-TV they received the loan for a construction business that failed.

The house was built in January 2005, after Atlanta-based Beazer Homes USA and ABC's "Extreme Makeover" demolished their old home and its faulty septic system. Within six days, construction crews and hoards of volunteers had completed work on the largest home that the television program had yet built.

The finished product was a four-bedroom house with decorative rock walls and a three-car garage that towered over ranch and split-level homes in their Clayton County neighborhood. The home's door opened into a lobby that featured four fireplaces, a solarium, a music room and a plush new office.

Materials and labor were donated for the home, which would have cost about $450,000 to build. Beazer Homes' employees and company partners also raised $250,000 in contributions for the family, including scholarships for the couple's three children and a home maintenance fund.

ABC said in a statement that it advises each family to consult a financial planner after they get their new home. "Ultimately, financial matters are personal, and we work to respect the privacy of the families," the network said.

Some of the volunteers who helped build the home were less than thrilled about the family's financial decisions.

"It's aggravating. It just makes you mad. You do that much work, and they just squander it," Lake City Mayor Willie Oswalt, who helped vault a massive beam into place in the Harper's living room, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

So let me get this straight... The family gets a free house, 250 grand for their kids' college, and a free trip to Disneyland, while their neighbors build them a new mini-mansion... and then they lose the house?

Screw the foreclosure auction... Where are the tar and feathers???